Key Takeaways:
Pinterest is reinforcing its role as a discovery engine for the next generation of beauty lovers. The social media platform announced the launch of its new Pinterest Assistant and AI-powered upgrades to its boards, with the company calling it the “first AI-powered, visual-first collaborator that transforms online shopping and discovery.”
This upgrade comes as Gen Z users increasingly turn to Pinterest for personalized products. With nearly 600 million total monthly active users, 84% of weekly Gen Z users say they find products that align with their taste and style on the platform.
Pinterest Assistant is different from most AI tools in its ability to understand what a user is looking for by drawing ideas from their saved boards, collages, or from other users with similar tastes. It learns the user's aesthetics and offers them proactive recommendations.
“People, especially Gen Z, say that the magic of Pinterest is that it ‘just gets me,’ whether that’s finding the perfect outfit or knowing your distinct style,” said Bill Ready, Chief Executive Officer, in a press release. “With Pinterest Assistant, we’re supercharging that magic by leveraging AI to help our users discover and shop like they would with that person who knows them best.”
This multimodal form of AI will be featured in text, image, and voice as a way to make beauty and lifestyle exploration more visual and “closer to how people shop in real life.” According to Pinterest, this system, which includes the platform’s proprietary Taste-graph, outperforms off-the-shelf models by more than 30% in shopping relevancy.
This improvement gives beauty shoppers more relevant product matches, shades, and formulas that they are looking for.
“Pinterest Assistant is your personal makeup artist,” said Vicky Gkiza, Vice President of Product Management, to BeautyMatter. “It already knows the beauty products that you like and your makeup aesthetic ... giving you the most customized and personal beauty recommendations without you needing to prompt it with specific details.”
The Pinterest Assistant is important for brands, too. It surfaces relevant ads, products, and campaigns from advertisers and merchants. Pinterest is encouraging partners to upload full product catalogs and activate Pinterest Performance+ campaigns to unlock the platform’s full AI-driven potential. For beauty marketers, this enables them to reach consumers by naturally embedding products within the discovery process.
Pinterest is also upgrading its boards with three new tabs, which will roll out globally in the upcoming months. For beauty, the “Make it yours” tab helps beauty enthusiasts transform saved inspiration into complete looks; “More ideas” recommends related beauty Pins, from tutorial videos to trending techniques; “All saves” combines all the previous images, products, and ideas users have saved into one board; and “Boards made for you” combines editorial expertise and AI-powered recommendations to deliver shoppable content to users’ home feeds and inboxes.
“Boards are central to what makes Pinterest an inspirational experience for our users, so we’re investing in making them even better,” said Gkiza in a press release. “Today’s updates make boards into a personal shopping assistant, powered by AI, to help users move from admiring their dream styles or spaces to actively achieving them.”
With the debut of Pinterest Assistant and AI-powered boards, Pinterest is redefining beauty and lifestyle discovery in digital forms through personalization and intuitive exploration.
